Still Here

In October 1982, Jonathan Blake walked into the Middlesex Hospital in London and was given a number. London 1. He was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to be diagnosed with HIV, told he had between three and nine months to live. He is 76 years old. He is still here. In this episode, Leslie Clarke talks to Jonathan about the life he was living before the diagnosis arrived, the winter of...

In 1953, the BBC secretly made its first ever documentary on homosexuality. The finished programme was so controversial that it sat on the shelf for four years. When a heavily edited version finally broadcast in July 1957, the original recording was lost. All that survived was a transcript, buried in a filing cabinet in a suburban bungalow in Reading. It stayed there, unnoticed, for decades. Until...

What does it mean to rescue a queer story from the archives? In this episode, host Leslie Clarke sits down with Dr D-M Withers, founder of Bristol-based indie publisher Lurid Editions and Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Exeter, and Dr Christopher A. Adams, playwright, scholar and literary executor to the late Mariana Villa-Gilbert. Together they explore the republication of Villa-...

This episode is in German. In this episode of Still Here , Leslie Clarke speaks with Helmut Metzner, Chair of the Magnus Hirschfeld Federal Foundation in Berlin, about memory, visibility and the fragile nature of progress on LGBTQ+ rights. Metzner reflects on his long career in politics, his life as an openly gay man, and the work of a foundation tasked with rebuilding queer knowledge and infrastr...

Hosted by Leslie Clarke Still Here is Scene Magazine’s new podcast exploring queer resilience, memory and resistance — told through the voices of those who refused to disappear. In our first episode, Leslie Clarke speaks with Craig Jones , former Royal Navy officer and founder of Fighting With Pride , about serving under the Armed Forces Gay Ban, coming out the day it was lifted, and the long figh...